Bernard Lewis remembered for Middle East scholarship

Bernard Lewis, a scholar whose study of the Middle East shaped 20th century U.S. foreign policy toward the region, died Saturday. He was 101.

Lewis, a Jew born in London in 1916, developed a passion for Middle Eastern languages during his bar mitzvah training. His interests propelled him to a doctorate in Islamic history, hurriedly finished in time for World War II. During the war, Lewis drove tanks until officers, who discovered his education and language proficiency, transferred him to intelligence. After the war, Lewis returned to academia. As the first Westerner granted access to the imperial Ottoman archives, he watched the Turkish democracy form while studying its history. Lewis was not only a leading Middle Eastern historian but also an architect of its future. He carried peace offerings between Egyptian dictators and Israeli prime ministers, twice, and met with leaders such as King Hussein of Jordan and Pope John Paul II.

Lewis taught in the 1970s and 1980s at Princeton and Cornell universities and translated and studied texts from al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. The 9/11 terror attacks called Lewis suddenly out of retirement to advise the Bush administration on the modern Middle East. He is credited with having a major influence on Middle East policy, and his most widely read book, What Went Wrong?, published in 2002, framed the public discussion of the region.

An articulate and analytical speaker and thinker, Lewis garnered both admiration and accusation for his views. While some perceived his work as continuing colonialist thinking, Lewis defended himself with his favorite compliment, the preface written by a member of the Muslim Brotherhood for the Arabic translation of one of his books: “He is either a candid friend or an honest enemy and in any case one who disdains to distort the truth.”